Mirror
by Danger13
Summary: Without a past, your future is, although still open, difficult to decipher.   AU CloudxOC SquallxOC
1. Preface

"You've made a big mistake."

The words spilled out off of his tongue in the same way that you would see them in a meeting. But, as opposed to the business talk that his old, worn lips normally spoke of, the purpose behind these five words was far more grave. Instead of just going on about statistics and graphs, he was talking on matters of life and death.

It was, in some ways, fascinating how he maintained the same sort of composure that he did for costumers and stockholders. You could sense no shift of expression in his eyes. They looked friendly and inviting, but at the same time, serious and commanding. The perfect traits for a man in his position. On the other hand, the pair of startling blue eyes sent fear running up and down the worker's spine like little sparks of electricity.

He sat in the chair in front of the man. An armed guard had brought him there by the order of this other man sitting before him, and he had come simply out of obedience. But, after witnessing the guard cradling the gun at his side with his other arm leading him along, it gave him second thoughts. Why had he been called down?

The papers. They must have found the papers.

The mere thought of it sent his mind spinning off on things that he purposefully kept from thinking of normally. He tried to keep focused, but that was out of the picture the second his skin felt the cold, metallic firmness of the chair. To compensate, he kept on a brave face to mask his dwindling courage. If he jumped to conclusions, he could let the man know something that he didn't already.

"I was just doing my job. What you told me to do." It sounded to him as if he was being too professional already, but it was all that he could muster.

"I never told you to do this."

From behind the desk, he brought up a single, manila folder. It slid across the dark brown surface without resistance and stopped with precision right in front of him. On its way over, the folder let one of the papers it contained slip out. To his own dismay, he recognized it immediately.

The blue eyes were now scanning all over him. Unease flooded over him, and he shifted in his seat. It felt like he was being sorted through, inspected for discrepancies. Should he take responsibility? Perhaps they wouldn't get upset about his findings. Maybe they brought him into the room to congratulate him. …What was he thinking? They had made it clear that he wasn't supposed to have any knowledge of what was beyond the barrier of restrictions they had given him during research, but now that he did, he knew all too well what the consequences were for possessing that knowledge.

Of course, he _should_ take responsibility for what he found, but in cases of life and death, couldn't that be overlooked? A simple white lie could be skimmed over when your blood was going to be spilt, couldn't it? He looked down at his worn hands and remembered.

It wasn't his life to give.

He took a deep breath, looked back up directly into the man's eyes, and replied. "You told us to find and report anything that we found that was wrong." He moved his gaze back down to the folder. "This fits that description."

He'd never thought it possible for his heart to beat so fast.

It almost seemed like thousands of volts of power had shot through the man behind the desk. He abruptly sat up, and in a split second, the professionalism that seemed to ooze from him only moments ago was gone. The only thing radiating from him now was rage, and it could be felt anywhere in the dim room. He was almost a completely different person.

His glare shot straight through the worker's plain, hazel eyes. He wanted to have the man burned alive, ripped apart limb by limb, shot down by a firing squad. Whatever it would take to get rid of him, he would do it. The information that he knew about, however he found it, was far too volatile. He needed to be disposed of, and fast. Rumors spread much too quickly, and when they found out that this one was true…

Loud and demanding shouts echoed all around the room and found their way faintly outside of the door, just within range of the guard's earshot. Within seconds, they launched into the room, ready to obey. The man frantically pointed at the worker and started barking orders out.

Maybe he yelled something like "Get him out of here at once!" or "He'll kill us all if you don't get rid of him!" Whatever it was, it didn't register with the worker. He didn't even struggle when they yanked him up, or when they tazed him repeatedly, or even when they clamped him down to the metal table and took out the sharp instruments of his death. The only thing he did was stare off and think. He was going to die.

But they would be safe.

_"How do I cover this one up…?" _he thought to himself as he sat back down. The plush black leather of the business chair was somewhat comforting. It's smooth metal frame and hand-sewn cushions were too far out of the average citizen's pay range. You wouldn't find something like this anywhere else but in the building that he was in, the building that he helped run. But more importantly, it signified power. And with power came money, which was easily one of his most favorite things. It didn't change, it kept its worth, and it could get you what you wanted, which were more than he could say for his wife.

He sighed and rested his elbows on the desk, cupping his face in his hands. _"At least he'll be dead." _But, it was the least of his worries now. It was always the same. The hardest part about a murder isn't the killing, it's cleaning up the mess.

The manila folder still lay out on the desk, only a single stray paper sticking out on the side. You couldn't see any text from the way the folder obscured it, only the upper corner of a photo. He picked it up and tapped it back in uniformly with the others, then bent down to slide it neatly into the incinerator underneath his desk.

_"Could he have made any more copies?"_ he questioned to himself. A sigh escaped his mouth. If there were any more copies, he would need the files in his hand to make sure that he could identify them and make sure they were destroyed. This wasn't something that he could hire someone else to do. Too many liabilities.

He brought the folder back up on his desk and opened it, then got on his computer. Not only would it be easier to find the physical folders with the thorough sorting system his company had established, he could make sure any digital copies were destroyed. _"Two birds with one stone,"_ he thought. Then it occurred to him, he didn't quite get where that saying came from. At least he knew what it meant.

As he strove on in his search for the dangerous files, something glinted at him from the corner of his eye. He stopped for second to come out of his deep concentration, and then looked over to see what it was. A small, silver pocket watch was lying open on the floor. It was overall unremarkable, no accents, etchings, nothing that could identify it. Cautiously, he got up and walked over.

The watch dully gleamed in the minimal lighting of the room. Attached to the top of it was a chain just as simple as the watch, if not more so. He picked it up tentatively in his large hand and inspected it closer. The latch on the side of the timepiece looked crooked and near breaking, but still held together when it moved. Like the latch, the outer metal on the watch was dented and far from smooth, but served its purpose. Other than the latch and the place where the chain was linked to it, the watch had no instrument on the side to change the time. Puzzled, he opened the casing to look at the face.

The glass protecting the hands of the small clock was perfectly clear, like it was new. The face was simple enough, and looked just as perfect as the glass protecting it was. However, despite its seemingly convincing newness, the hands were completely still. He tapped it to see if it was just stuck, but to no avail. _"Was this his…?"_

On the inside of the clasp, a small picture was tucked inbetween the metal edges of the outer clasp. It was of a family. The mother kneeled off to the right, smiling warmly and proud. Her eyes were a piercing blue, and looked brighter and happier than any other mom's that he'd seen. Brown hair cascaded down around her neck and stopped at about halfway down her arms, which were wrapped around a small boy. If you weren't looking close enough, it almost looked like he was grimacing, but closely inspected, that wasn't the case. There was a fire in the son's striking blue eyes that seemed too bright to be unhappy. His brown hair was like his mother's in a way, but shorter and brushed back out of his face. If he was adopted, it was doubtful that even the parents could tell.

A baby laid in the arms of the father, clothed loosely in a pink shirt and small denim pants. Her small eyebrows were pinched together in confusion on her small face, as her deep chocolate eyes looked at the pink piece of fabric sitting helplessly in her fist. Small tufts of reddish-brown hair covered her tiny head and stuck up in wild tangles of a fuzzy mess.

The strong arms that held onto the small child were, at the same time, gentle and protective. His smile was almost reminiscent of his wife's, but in itself different at the same time. Surrounding his brown eyes was a web of laugh lines that stretched out to his temples, proving his body's age, but not his soul's. He was more than a family man; he was a father, a dad to those children.

And now he was dead.

The watch dropped from his hand and clattered to the ground in a moment of shock. If he heard it, the noise didn't register. Someone else's life had been prematurely cut off, and was now lying bleeding in his hands. Almost instinctively, he jammed them into his pockets. But no… he had to calm down. The worst thing that he could do was to get worried and make mistakes. Mistakes would make everything even worse.

In a frantic but controlled hurry, he scooped up the silver watch and rushed over to his desk. He shoved the chair back and got down on his knees, trying to hold back the frantic fear building up inside of him. In the shadow of his desk, he fumbled around to find the small drawer that was supposed to be situated right against the glass of the desktop. His fingers slid along the smooth surface for the telltale crevice that signified the small contraption he was searching for.

Sweat started to creep its way onto his forehead. It couldn't be gone… that was impossible. At least he hoped it was. After testing his patience far beyond where he thought it could go, the consistency of the flawless exterior gave way into the gap that he was looking for. Shaking with apprehension, he staggered to regain his position of comfort on the ground.

He pushed in gently on the small drawer and heard a faint click as it slid out of its mostly stationary position inside of his desk. A soft orange glow came out into the darkness that he'd been staring at for what had lasted to him an eternity. It flickered and morphed from dim to bright, confirming that it was still in working order. As closely fitted as it was to the top of the desk, you couldn't put anything into the top of it, so, instead, a small hole had been put into the side of it.

Hardly able to control his fingers, he managed to get the watch into the slot and all but slammed it shut. He slumped down onto his knees and covered his face with his hands, out of relief, and out of a growing need of his to hide from his actions. Then, he remembered. These weren't _actions,_ but steps. Steps that got everyone closer and closer to an end goal that would be better for everyone. The details of this future were inexistent, all but the one fact that it would be _better_. And that was all the motivation that he needed to get working.

After composing himself out of his state of shock and relief, he rose and sat back in his seat, relaxed. With smooth motions, he commanded the digital space he resided in and erased every single trace of his killing that he found.

He looked down at a small, silver etched piece of metal on his desk that he kept at his desk at all times to remind him of what he was doing. In simple, blocky letters, it stated plainly: _Back to business as usual. _It brought a slight smile to his otherwise strictly straight face, and he turned back to his work.


	2. Chapter I

In all of its bright glory, the golden amber light of the sun shone down on the stark white sheets of my bed. It reflected up off of the soft pillow resting under my head, turning the dark, black insides of my thin eyelids pink, highlighting the small vessels crossing all around in my flesh. The sleep that had just been so present in me slipped out into whatever recesses it waited in for me inside of my body. The thick cobwebs that had entangled themselves on the inner workings of my mind started to unravel and snap away as I came back into consciousness. As this was happening, a few things came to my attention.

First off, it was cold. Not to say that the people that ran the place were soulless cheapskates or anything (which they were), but it didn't normally feel like the arctic tundra. Honestly, with it being summer, it usually felt more "Death Valley" or "seconds away from combusting into a human bonfire". Second, my clothes were normally baggy. Uncomfortable and similar to the homeless guys out in the alley, but not clammy. And lastly, someone was standing by my bed, an empty bucket in their hand.

I didn't really need to look down to see what had just happened.

"I'm up…" I croaked.

"Took you long enough. The shaking and yelling didn't work, so I had to get creative."

"So ice is creative for you."

She grimaced. "Since it's usually like a billion degrees in here, yes, it is creative. I had to steal some from the kitchen and everything."

"Well, thanks for your "creative vision"."

As I got up, I grasped the blanket in between my cold fingers and launched it up on top of her. It flopped down on her head with a wet slapping noise. I forced my still tired body to sit up and get off of the bed, and went off in search of my clothes. From my agonized peripheral vision, I saw her shrug, lay it back down on my dripping bed, and cross back over to her side of the room, an air of accomplishment about her. I put 'contemplate revenge' on my mental to-do list and continued to get myself ready for the day.

I found the essentials packed in my drawer along with an outfit for that day. I sighed and started taking them out. If there was one thing that I could skip in my circadian rhythm, it would be getting myself presentable in the morning.

With too much experience, I unrolled a clean ace wrap and undid the one I was wrapped in. It felt better than you could ever imagine exposing my skin to the air, since my waist up to my shoulders had just been contained in a cocoon of fabric, sweat, and heat, not to mention how tight it had to be. I stood in cool ecstasy for a few seconds before realizing how weird it looked for me to be standing around without a shirt on with a stupid grin plastered on my face, and got back to getting dressed.

I firmly wrapped the clean ace wrap back on my liquid-paper toned skin and strapped it down with the metal clips that came on the ends. After a couple of experimental breaths, I put a shirt on and grabbed an old, somewhat rusty pair of scissors. My dark brown hair had been growing out pretty far, and in the heat and surroundings, I needed to keep it short. And due to the absence of a convenient barber, I had to do the job myself.

Picking out the longest locks, I systematically cut them short enough for my own mental measurements. The blades of the scissors somewhat obeyed, cutting off sections of my hair in lumps. Luckily, I'd already settled for that "layered" look a while ago, and sat the shears back in their designated spot.

The mirror sat in front of me at an odd and irritating slant, reflecting back the outer image that I'd made for myself. I brushed some hair out of my face and sighed. It defiantly took a lot of work, but at least it _did_ work… I looked like a guy. Hats off to having a roof over your head.

I walked over to the small window in between our beds and rested my elbows on the sill. The traces of our expert gardeners were evident; the grass was either dying or being choked out by the numerous weeds, the flowerbeds were more like dirtbeds/makeshift litter boxes, and untrimmed vines ran all across the concrete. Obviously, we were sticking it to the man big time.

Black, gothic gates surrounded the disaster with barbed wire and cold, intimidating metal. My guess was that they were trying to save the lives of people (i.e. health inspectors) who might have actually been interested in coming in. The only logical explanation that I could give for us was that they had a sick obsession for the cruel and unusual, but mostly the cruel.

Over the locked gates of the fence, the metal bent and arched into the only moniker that you could use to identify the building, _Orphanage for Troubled Boys_. It made me smile a little. _"Not quite…"_

A loud cowbell cut through the still, calm silence and audibly sent the rest of the building into haywire mode. Doors could be heard opening all up and down the hall, followed by stampeding footsteps and loud obscenities. I rubbed my now aching temples. "Time for the breakfast stampede… Got your cattle prod ready?" I asked.

She reached down into under her bed and came back up with an actual taser in her hand. The one thing about having Devona as your roommate that I tend to forget is that she has the habit of stealing things. Even worse, she's good at it.

"Do I want to know where you got that?" I asked, backing away slightly.

"…Probably not," she said, slipping the taser into one of her pockets.

I shook my head and rubbed my temples again. "Let's just get going."

We waited a little longer for the majority of the crowd to move along, then left for the cafeteria. If the outside of the place wasn't a good enough indicator, the inside made it pretty clear we meant business when it came to proving our lack of caring. If it weren't for the constant presence of orphaned boys everywhere, you would never guess that anyone would ever live there. Although it might have been habitable when it was new, it defiantly wasn't now.

We hurried down into the cafeteria and got in line for whatever it was that we were being fed that morning. Normally, we didn't actually eat what we were given for health reasons (personally, I haven't gotten used to the taste of mold), but it actually smelled kind of… appetizing. Either A: We'd died in our sleep and made it to heaven or B: They were trying to impress someone. Considering I was still in the same place, I pretty much forgot about option A.

Devona looked around her in confusion. "…I don't see any zombies, so why hath the apocalypse cometh?" I nodded. "I think it's just a sign. But one we can't ignore… I say we lock ourselves in the room and seal it with an unholy amount of duct tape."

She paused. "…After we sample the delicacies to make sure it's not a plethora of holograms."

I pouted a little. "Don't say that… Then we wouldn't get out of running…"

We made it to the food and grabbed a couple of trays, ready to eat. The line went down a "serve yourself" kind of buffet. As expected, all of the actual food was gone. On the bright side, we were more trash compacters in the sense that we could run off of junk food, which was still left.

She shrugged in response to my complaint. "I need fuel. I'm running on empty and I see a gas station," Devona said as she dumped a considerable amount of ice cream on her plate. I sighed in relief. "It is real…" After scanning the buffet for a few seconds, I gravitated over to the garlic bread, which just happened to be right next to the chocolate. Elated in my good luck, I lumped both of them on my plate.

I turned to the tables to find all of the good spots taken up. Although I was as far away from surprised as you can get, I was still agitated. The only tables left were the two that squeaked like you were killing a colony of mice every time you moved an inch, and the one that was next to the corner a.k.a. the Corner of Smells Unnamed. Tough choice.

"Now I'm shell shocked."

Devona reappeared next to me, her tray now magically full of yet another debatably healthy portion of ice cream and some breadsticks. She looked around and came to the same conclusion that I had. "I'm gonna hightail it back to our room before the floor opens up."

I readied my lazy and reluctant legs for the adventure back, but stopped as my eyes wandered over to the stage in the back of the room. Someone I didn't know was standing in front of the microphone, looking over all of the people eating. "Don't think we can," I stated, nodding over to him.

She nodded and sat down at the table in the corner, since it was farthest away from the stage. I almost protested, but decided against it and sat down next to her. To keep my mind off of the stench, I looked back over to the stage.

The guy now messing with the microphone was pretty tall. I'll admit, my standards for that are pretty skewed since I wasn't exactly gifted with height myself, but I had a few people to compare him to. His black hair stuck out almost straight up in the front before coming back down on the sides of his face. The back of his hair was spiked out on the top and then gradually spiked down. If a mullet was a party in the back, this guy was having a rave.

He was wearing a black uniform of some sort, like a battle ready jumpsuit. A large leather belt went across his midsection, and in the middle of it there was some sort of metal insignia in the middle of it. The outfit didn't have sleeves, but it did have shoulder pads. He had unnaturally blue eyes.

There were two others off to the side of the stage, too. One of them was wearing the same outfit, but he had blonde hair. Somehow, it was even spikier than the microphone guy's, like he'd jammed a fork in a light socket. His eyes were the same color of blue as mic guy's.

One other guy was leaning on the wall, staring at the floor, obviously not too enthusiastic about having to spend time with loud, pubescent young men. He wasn't wearing the same outfit that light socket and mic were, and his hair was pretty normal too, just brown and swept back from the front. Over a white shirt, he wore a leather half jacket, complete with most likely useless zippers and metal studs. At least biker wannabes are actually nicer than their real counterparts.

"His hair looks like a porcupine," Devona stated as she analyzed them.

"That it does… Huh. What's with the guy with the leather fetish?" I asked. Devona shrugged as she chewed on more garlic bread. "Uhhuh. Hates cows?"

I nodded in agreement and looked back over to them. Mic guy had gotten down and was talking to the others. I looked closer at the uniforms. On Mic's back there was a pretty standard sword, the hilt was black with a u-shaped gold hand guard. Looking closer at it, the emblem on Light Socket's belt looked… familiar. It was basically a square with a rounded top, with uniform lines curving around inside of it. Then I remembered.

It represented S.O.L.D.I.E.R.

I turned back to Devona. "… They're from Soldier."

She looked back up from her food and over to them, now curious. "…What are they doing here?" she asked. I thought about it. Nothing going on inside of the building was bad enough to draw that much attention (which I would know, since I caused a good portion of it), and if there were, they wouldn't just hold a press conference to tell us to stop. There wasn't exactly anything marginally good going on, either.

"I have no idea."

As she shrugged it off, Mic stepped back up to the stage and cleared his throat. As if on command, the room got louder. I sighed looked over to the portion of the room that was occupied by the ever-present Mr. Paine. Even if he had been bad at his job, I still think he would have gotten it by his name alone. And, unfortunately he was absolutely perfect for his position as discipline director.

An idiot kid sitting in front of him laughing like an obnoxious hyena stopped. You could see the stupid smile practically get wiped off of his face as the color left his face. I knew the feeling pretty well, and if I remember right, he would have a chill going down his spine, his heart, lungs, spleen, and lunch all would have made their way up to his throat. He turned around.

Mr. Paine brought out his black cane from behind his well-dressed self and brought it up to his side. In near-matrix slow motion, you could see the kid cower and clamp his eyes shut. From behind the darkened lenses of his glasses, Mr. Paine swept the bottom of his cane across the back of his head. Almost automatically, he fell over on the ground, out cold. As silence fell over the mouths of the loud, a couple of tenants came in and dragged him out.

I leaned over to Devona. "I do believe that he just freaked out that Soldier guy…"

The color had drained from Mic's face, and he was looking cautiously over at Mr. Paine. Devona nodded, smiling. "Yeah. He looks like he's going to faint after he yells at Mr. Paine for a few years…"

After a few more awkward moments of silence, Mic opened his mouth. "Uhh… thanks." Creepily happy with himself, Mr. Paine nodded and reclaimed his spot on the wall. Mic blinked a couple of times and turned back to the quiet crowd. "Well, in case you haven't noticed, we're from Soldier. We're here today to find some new recruits.

In one giant explosion of laughter, spitballs and food started to fly up into the air. It got loud again as they started to taunt each other, throwing back and forth insults and expletives. Leather Man looked up from the floor and picked his weapon up from the wall; a silver sword with a hilt that looked like a gun. A trigger stuck out from the black hilt, and a revolver cylinder sat in the middle of the blade near the hilt.

He lifted it up in the air aimed at the ceiling and fired it off. Either amazed by the genius of a gun mounted into a sword or scared for their lives, the room fell silent again and turned their short attentions back to the stage. Mr. Pain nodded in approval to him, but he just sat his sword back against the wall and returned his gaze back to the somewhat interesting patterns of the white floor tiles.

As Devona hid her laughter behind her hands, I marveled at the silence. I had tried to make this happen countless times before and through the many attempts of food fights, riots, and stealing things from the discipline director (which only happened once), I had never gotten close to this amount of peace. Besides angering me, it gave me the urge to sneak out and buy a gun.

Mic sighed and returned to the microphone. "But we only need two, so to decide, we're going to have you fight each other, tournament style."

The air in the room was ignited once again with yelling, just more angered and insulting. That, and more food, silverware, and a shoe or five. Devona turned back to me with a raised eyebrow. "This is gonna be fun…?" I considered this for a few seconds, then replied. "Challenges are fun. So no." She nodded and continued to nibble at her dwindling food supply.

I looked back up to the stage to see if there was anything else to be said. In Mic's hand, I spotted a small stack of papers, which he was looking through. After a few seconds of scan reading, he stepped back up to the microphone. "Oh great. He has papers and a mike," I said, and took out my safety precaution, headphones. After untangling them out of my pocket, I dug out my mp3 and plugged it in, relieving myself of any unnecessary noise.

As the music made its way into my ear canals, my mind drifted off. I thought briefly about what would happen if we won, if we lost. Although, at the time, I wasn't really worried about the future, about the past. I didn't care about how I ended up in an orphanage, what happened to my parents. I was a creature of habit, one that ran off of impulses and desires.

And it was probably the most fun that I've ever had.

I let myself be carried away on the aggressive tunes of my music (which were being played at what some would call "dangerous" levels), and ignored the rest of the world as I drifted off to sleep.


End file.
